For my STEP Signature Project, I completed an internship with Deloitte & Touche LLP as an audit & assurance intern. Throughout my internship, I learned a lot about the company, its workings, accounting basics, and many communication skills. During my time at Deloitte, I would help different engagement teams complete work papers and assignments which helped them towards their goal of completing the audit before their deadline.

This internship was a big step for me in my life, not only was it my first experience with a real job, but it also gave me great insight into what a real job is. With Deloitte being my first real job, it taught me invaluable knowledge on every aspect of a true job. It taught me what matters most and how to succeed. Deloitte also helped prepare me for the real world and what to expect at the start of a career. I would like to point out three key aspects that during my time with Deloitte, helped me mature and prepare me for life after college. 

To start I would like to talk about my coworkers, Deloitte has a strong emphasis on the people side of the company and making strong relationships with your coworkers. This made a difference for me while working with Deloitte. While the work wasn’t the most intriguing and exciting, the thing that made me excited to come in every day was my coworkers. The company highly values its coworkers and the relationships they foster through working together. The friendliness and positivity in the office was something I’ve never seen before which completely changed my view on the workplace as a whole. I realized that the most important aspect of a job isn’t the pay but the atmosphere the company builds and the people you work with. I also learned that although many of the assignments could be done individually it is never a bad thing to ask for help and work together.

Second I would like to discuss the learning experiences I went through during my time at Deloitte. Going into the company I had no clue what I was going to be doing. I knew it was audit but I didn’t have much clue on what that entailed. I thought my first week would be rough since I was clueless and new to all of this. To my surprise, it was fairly easy. This was because of the people I worked with who helped me every step of the way. They explained the assignments in simple terms for me and made sure I was comfortable asking for help if I ever needed it. Later on in the job I was able to learn more and more to the point where I was working on certain parts of the audit all by myself. During this time I was able to teach people what I’ve been working on and answer questions they had for me. Deloitte not only taught me useful information about audit and the company as a whole, but it also taught me better ways to learn. Deloitte taught me to write down all my questions and not continually ask my supervisors questions. They also taught me to try to work on a problem for a certain amount of time, and then move on if I still can’t get it after a certain amount of time. These seem like fairly simple concepts but most people do the opposite when in practice. With these helpful tips, Deloitte better prepared me for the real world which made me a lot more confident for life after college. 

Lastly, Deloitte helped me prepare for life after college and going into the real world through the interactions I had at the office. Whether it was coworker, client, online, or in-person each interaction taught me something new and helped me build the essential skills I need to succeed in life. My interactions with my coworkers taught me how to ask questions, build relationships, joke around, and talk professionally when work needed to be finished. Then on the other hand my interactions with the client taught me how to professionally ask questions, send professional emails, and interact with someone when you need from them. I learned how to communicate with my peers over Zoom in a professional manner. We would have daily touchpoint meetings where we would discuss what we’ve been working on and our progress. Overall I learned how to better communicate with different groups of people in both a professional and non-professional manner. It vastly helped improve my communication skills which I consider to be essential no matter what type of work someone goes into.

This development strongly matters to me since I want to be as prepared as I can be for life after college. The internship as a whole helped me greatly improve as a person and I’m very proud of where it brought me. I was able to strengthen my communication skills, foster new relationships and networks, and learn invaluable knowledge about the field I will be pursuing. I believe this opportunity has given me the edge over a lot of my competition since I feel much more prepared for life after college than I did before this opportunity. I want to advance myself as much as I can and always keep growing and I feel like this internship with Deloitte helped build the grounds to grow from. I feel much more confident about life after college and I can’t wait to see how far I can grow with Deloitte after college.